Hob Broun - Odditorium

“If it was anything interesting,” Tildy said with a kind of paralyzed composure, “they’ve certainly been quiet about it.” Her mouth was very dry, but she wouldn’t touch that coffee. “But those watches, beautiful as they are, I need to turn them over. You can help me if you want to. Will you help me or not?”

“Sure, kid. I can call around, talk to some guys. I’m willing to forgive and forget so long as everything’s on the table. I have this thing about secrets, it’s almost like an allergy with me.”

“I’m not keeping any. Guy’s a little weird for me, I need ready cash, you’re a man who can do favors. Pretty basic. No secrets.”

“I’m so glad. Help is much easier to give when I feel comfortable…. And about that friend of yours. Think he might be good for some more gifts anytime soon?”

“Possibly.” Tildy looked at her wrist where there was no watch and got up. She had to get out of here right away, before Sparn brought out the thumb screws. “Possibly.”

“Let’s stay in touch then, kid. If you’ve got a problem, any kind of problem, I’m always ready to talk.”

She trembled in the elevator and stumbled in the lobby. Back to the heat in the street, where she felt stupid and girlish. This exploratory trip, contacting Sparn at all, had been a mistake — that was obvious as a neon sign. But it didn’t have to be an enormous mistake, only a modest one. Despite his lumbering innuendo, Sparn had nothing conclusive to go on, no way to make the connections definite. Still, he’d laid out those connections so readily that he must have been working from a script formulated in advance. Which meant what? Surely nothing good. Keen temptation notwithstanding, it was never wise to underestimate Sparn, particularly where money was involved. Maybe he’d even sent someone to follow her?

Driving home through thickening darkness, all Tildy saw were dim and scabby faces staring back at her from stoops and alleyways, the circuit bums who flocked to Jacksonville each year to wait out cold weather up north, men with corroded vision and the cowering instincts of dogs systematically abused. Tildy sat feebly in her car as shadows deepened, filled with the realization that she was as defenseless as they were. The more she told herself to stop thinking about probabilities, the more relentlessly her mind turned and turned on the knot of her troubles, making the same progress as a canvas drill bit. Facts were facts. Sparn had her in his crosshairs, Karl was a refugee in fantasyland, there was a trunkload of secret wampum to take care of, and everything teetered over her head. Tildy had the frantic wish of someone who had just lost fingers in an industrial accident: If I could only go back in time; back to before.

She knew exactly where she’d go, too. Back to a night not unlike this one, enclosed in a speeding car, but with the animal presence of Christo next to her on the first leg of that journey to New York that had been so alive with possibilities … Yes, Christo next to her. He’d know how to fence the jewelry, how to deal with Sparn and his ticklish suspicions, the whole squalid mess. This sort of thing wasn’t merely in Christo’s territory, it defined that territory. Amazed and sorry that she hadn’t thought of this before, Tildy stopped at the next rest area and went to the telephone.

This had nothing to do with desire or nostalgia, she reminded herself, piling coins on the chewed-up yellow pages. You’re only looking for guidance. There’s no reason for the stiffness in your fingers. She got Pierce’s number out of her handbag, threw in a bunch of quarters and shuffled her feet listening to the rings.

“Hi. I’m not here right now, but if you leave your name and number at the sound of the tone, I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can.”

Tildy left the receiver dangling and backed away.

Karl was waiting up for her. He took the sack of diner food from her hand and mashed her in his arms.

“Take it easy. I’ve only been gone since this morning.”

“Yeah, but I had these bad feelin’s once it got dark, could see pickin’ up that phone and there’d be a cop or a doctor on the other end.”

They tore into lukewarm hamburgers, dribbling ketchup and fat on the bedspread. Tildy ate so fast that she bit down on the inside of her cheek, a salty taste of blood seasoning the food.

“Gonna tell me what come off with Sparn or do I have to guess?”

“Nothing much. We talked about old times, what some of the girls were up to, stuff like that.”

“You know I’m talkin’ about the gold. What’s that old turnip bleeder gonna do about it?”

Good question. His big lie-to-me eyes were looking at her across the bed. “Well, I don’t expect he’ll be much help. We’ll be on our own. Independent, like it or not.”

“That’s a long way to go, and I ain’t just talkin’ Jacksonville and back, to come away with so little. You all right, baby? You look bone tired.”

To fill him in would be the decent thing, let him hear what she’d heard in that cold room with the velour furniture. Sometimes decency served no purpose; dead echoes, an alarm shouted into a cavern miles long.

“You’re right, I’m beat. But before I get in bed I’d like to wash this dirty trip off in the shower.”

“Can I come with you?”

Waiting for something to happen, Tildy called in sick to work the next couple of days. It rained very hard the first night, exposing two separate leaks in the roof. Inexplicably, a tape-recorded lecture on estate planning was delivered to them in the mail. Karl jabbered incessantly about the set of drums he wanted to buy. Ondray Keyes fell off his bicycle and broke his wrist. But nothing happened.

When Tildy showed up at the Medi Quick on Friday morning, Holstein asked what she was doing there.

“I work here, Ray.”

“Not anymore.”

She turned and looked to the back of the store where he was pointing with his chin. DaVita was buttoning herself into the red and blue company smock. She had a lavender bruise on her face and her hair was much shorter.

“Hey, wow … This is very embarrassing and all. I came in looking for you a couple of times ’cause I wanted to talk and finally he asked me if … You gotta understand. Dennis cracked up the car and the kids were coming out of the bottom of their shoes and we been living on macaroni and lunch meat the last few weeks. I’m sorry, I’m real sorry.”

“You two know each other?” Holstein was crushed.

Tildy’s eyes pinned him. “Does the Pope shit in the woods? Sure, Ray, we were turning tricks together in high school.” She tugged at her belt, extruded a sliver of tongue.

Holstein just stared with mouth open as if watching a hardcore loop.

DaVita, her mouth going white at the corners, lunged forward and grabbed Tildy’s hands. “Don’t, don’t,” she stage-whispered. “I know you must be sore and everything, but don’t mess this up for me. Those kids, you just don’t know. I can’t deal them off like an old washing machine and Donnie’s no good to us out in the street all day and they won’t let me on the welfare and I need this job.”

Tildy pulled free and for one small moment laid her palm on DaVita’s bruised cheek. “You can have it. I don’t want it.”

DaVita looked amazedly at the hand that had just touched her. On its third finger was a fat emerald ring that Karl had put there during breakfast.

“That’s so beautiful.”

“This?” Tildy smiled thinly and turned. “I grow them from seeds.”

Then she went up the street and drank herself into a thunderous high-noon headache.

DISAPPOINTMENT — SHARP, PRECISE AND direct — is a good sign of native intelligence. After the humiliating failure of his one and only big-time move, Christo had to get back to basics. A man who doesn’t know his limits is a man forever doomed to doing things the hard way.